These are the rules
by cyanspark
Summary: They took a man and they broke him until he became the Winter Soldier. (Spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier)


They took him and they broke him.

When he first woke up, in that unfamiliar room surrounded by unfamiliar faces and his mismatched flesh-and-metal hands, he still had his soldier's instincts and scraps of memories and a spark of anger rattling around in his skull, so he tried to fight his way out before they managed to jam a sedative into his neck.

They took him and they broke him.

Little by little, piece by piece, they scrubbed his brain and purged his last remaining memories until all that was left was that ember of rage that refused to be controlled and knew, somehow, that what was happening to him was _wrong_.

They took him and they broke him.

Their methods were crude; they took Pavlov's theory of behavioral conditioning and warped it for their own ends. They beat him and electrocuted him and scraped his mind raw until they stomped that ember out and he could turn against them no more than a gun could turn against its owner.

These were the rules: he was to obey every order without question, and he was to fulfill every mission they gave him. Failure to comply meant punishment. They drilled these rules into his head, and they did it so well that even when they punished him (uncommonly as that happened), he no longer even remembered how to protest.

They took him and they broke him, and they were so successful that if they ordered him to shoot himself in the head, his dead eyes would fill with fear, but he would raise the gun to his temple, and he would press the trigger.

* * *

But there is still something left in that hollow shell of a person they have named the Winter Soldier.

Images flash through his mind, too scattered to make sense. A man with glasses, smiling coldly, saying "_Sergeant Barnes_"—

There is a train winding through the mountains in the dead of winter, and that man, that blond-haired man on the bridge, he's on that train. "_Bucky! No!_" he yells, just like he called him Bucky on the street, and _who the hell is Bucky?_ the Winter Soldier wonders, but it sounds familiar somehow—

Falling, he's falling into an icy ravine—

He's not dead, someone is dragging his broken body through the snow as he looks down blankly at his bloody stump of a left arm—

A saw cuts through what's left of his arm—

"_The procedure is already started. You are to be the new face of HYDRA—_"

Two hands, one flesh, one metal; he tries to crush the throat of the nearest doctor but they knock him out—

"_Put him on ice—_"

He's in a capsule, _let me out_, he tries to scream, but then it freezes over and the last thing he sees is his own horror-struck face reflected in the glass—

The Winter Soldier lashes out, slamming his left arm into the scientist trying to repair the metal. He hears the click of a dozen guns aimed at him but he doesn't move, his mind is still whirling with the images of blood, snow, ice, "_Bucky! No!_"...

He hears the door open. He hears footsteps enter, sees Alexander Pierce but doesn't see him.

"Mission report."

He failed. He should answer that he failed, that he doesn't know why but something about that blond-haired man in the blue jacket unsettled him and he fled. But he doesn't say anything.

"Mission report, _now_."

Pierce's voice holds a note of warning, but he still doesn't answer. Train, snow, blond-haired man…

He hears the crack of Pierce's backhanded slap across his face, feels the sting of it, but it barely registers in his mind.

"The man on the bridge," he starts. "Who was he?"

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment."

He thinks about that. It's not the answer he's looking for.

"I knew him," he says.

Pierce settles down on a seat in front of him. He starts talking about how the Winter Soldier's work has been a gift to mankind, but the Winter Soldier barely hears him. He is still thinking about the man in the blue jacket—he was wearing a blue suit on the train, with a white star and the red-and-white stripes of an American flag, and he was reaching out to him—"_Bucky! No!_"...

"...But," Pierce is saying, "if you don't do your part, I can't do mine. And HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves."

"But I knew him," the Winter Soldier repeats. His voice, it sounds so small and plaintive in the stillness of the room. He's never wanted anything before, but now he wants so badly to know, to _remember_ this man who'd held a hand out to him and called him "Bucky."

Pierce sighs. Gets up from his chair. "Prep him."

"He's been out of cryofreeze too long," a HYDRA scientist protests.

"Then wipe him, and start over."

The words make his pulse quicken with fear. He knows what is coming next—the pain, the loss of what little he's managed to remember until he is nothing more than a blank slate again.

But they took him and they broke him so well that he can do nothing but accept the bit they put in his mouth, even though he is terrified. The restraints clamp down, the apparatus for his head descends, and he is terrified, he is _terrified_ and he _doesn't want this_ but these are the rules and they broke him so well that escape doesn't even cross his mind.

The machine hums to life.

He screams.


End file.
